| Welcome
to HTH2, formerly Hackney
Town Hall Square. A £70 million-plus project for the cultural renewal
of central Hackney in London’s east end, HTH2 is the heart of the
area’s new ‘creative quarter’. Home of artists and immigrants, Hackney is a traditionally working class area undergoing protracted gentrification. The nomination and production of a creative (aka cultural) quarter is intended to act as a regeneration incubator, attracting a new class of customer to this formerly despised part of the capital. HTH2 combines a music venue (The Ocean Centre), a library and new media complex (The Technology & Learning Centre or TLC), rehabilitated public space (the square itself) and theatre, comedy and other live arts (the refurbished Hackney Empire). The whole project was funded through a private finance consortium including MACE, Roche, Tarmac Constructions and Schroder’s Bank. The Ocean, with its concert halls, production facilities and Aqua bar, enjoys a 150-years rent-free lease from Hackney Council plus a £300,000 a year grant. The council, declared bankrupt in 2001, recently auctioned off a large share of its housing, nurseries, doctors surgeries, playing fields, schools, youth clubs, libraries and swimming pools. Prices were very competitive and developers picked up bargains in an area which has seen London’s steepest increase in property values. Hackney Council continues to cut back on services and staff but has no long term means to remedy its structural under-funding at the hands of central government. |
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| Click to enlarge images |
| With a remit to deliver ‘vibrancy’
to the square and its environs, HTH2 displays all the stigmata of regenerated
space. Aseptic, generic and surveilled, it’s a vitrification of place
(something socially produced and by definition volatile) into planned ‘ambience’.
Silting up the channel between the area’s past and future, the square
places heritage (the TLC now hosts Hackney Museum) next to learning and
culture, domesticating them all. The square is not the only part of Hackney’s regeneration programme, however... |